A neat little piece of climate policy work was just released, albeit quietly, during the federal election. Nic Rivers and Mark Jaccard have been taking analytical jabs at various climate policies for a very long time. Their central theme has been to compare, from an analytical perspective, what government’s say they will achieve and what their policies will most likely deliver. Their latest contribution, with Jotham Peters, can be found here and provides this nice conclusion:

We conclude that, as currently designed, it is highly unlikely that the policies of the government of Canada will achieve the target of reducing national emissions 20% below 2006 levels by 2020. The lack of an economy-wide emissions price and the allowance for 100% offsets for industrial emitters make it highly likely that emissions will be significantly higher than target levels in 2020 and indeed might even be close to today’s levels. Since the government claims that it is intent on achieving its 2020 emissions reduction target, it is difficult to understand why it does not immediately convert the intensity cap to an absolute cap and eliminate or severely reduce the offset provision. It also needs to extend its cap to cover all emissions in the economy.

The bottom line is that politicians have been promising to save the world for a very very long time but have instead been burning our cash while getting very little done (see Nic and Marks other paper here: Burning Our Money to Warm the Planet).

All climate policy by addressing energy use and production can have wide-ranging and long-term effects in the economy, touching virtually everyone as costs get passed through prices. This is why the election climate policy “debate” , and I use this term loosely, deserves more serious attention. But then again in politics, and especially in this campaign, thoughtfulness is in short supply — “Says who… and your Mom wears Army Boots”. Too bad, cause their political gain is our economic and environmental loss.